Simcity 4 on new computers bought in 06/07

[Peteri 0]

Hello people, I've been a member real long but never really posted. Anyway, I used to run Simcity 4 on  this rig

Intel Pentium 4 2.85Ghz

1GB DDR 333MHz RAM

nVidia FX5500

Windows XP

1.5GB Paging File

Recently I upgraded my computer to play the newer titles like Oblivion and all so

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83Ghz

2GB DDR2 800MHZ RAM

ATI Radeon X1900XT

Windows XP

3GB Paging File

I've been reading the forums throughly to see if anyone has had the same problem but no luck yet. There was some mention of Simcity 4 not understanding the newer systems and I seem to be experiencing it. The game used to run better on the older system and had virtually no lag in a city under 50,000. This new system has very choppy graphics. 

First thing I did was changed the renderer from hardware to software and it helped quite a bit. Then I turned off vertical sync through the ATI utility, left Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing as application specified. I'm running everything at High at 1280x1024 and the game is incredibly unresponsive. When I bump it down to all Low or 1024x768, it performs better but the menu is still somewhat unresponsive. I have set CPU affinity to CPU 0 but someone posted set to CPU 1 and I haven't tried that yet.

Does anyone know how I can get the game to run smoothly again? Or will I have to wait for Simcity 5? Thanks all!

[jabezscratch 159]

I feel your pain. Your specs are very similar to mine. Suffice it to say that, upon upgrading, I noticed the same issues you noted. I experimented w/ everything until finally I switched from hardware to software rendering and the game runs very smoothly now (although not w/o some glitches here and there). Frankly, I think that it is an ATI issue. I have a X1900 GT. I installed the latest ATI drivers as recently as two days ago and tried hardware rendering but when I run the game in that mode, it is barely playable -- switch to software rendering and it flies. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is the video card b/c the rednering mode seems to fix the issue.

It upsets me though b/c I wonder much better the game would run if I could free up the CPU more by running the game in hardware mode.

If anyone else has similar experiences, frustrations, etc., I'd really like to hear from you on this point.

[DFire870 2]

That's interesting, because my stats are similar and I can run SC4 fine. Sure it's slow when I go to high graphics, but that's usually because of all the stuff I have installed. I have an ATI Radeon X1300.

[jabezscratch 159]

Originally posted by: DFire870 That's interesting, because my stats are similar and I can run SC4 fine. Sure it's slow when I go to high graphics, but that's usually because of all the stuff I have installed. I have an ATI Radeon X1300.quote>

 

Do you run the game in software or hardware rendering mode?

[AND_YOU_ARE 0]

I recently built myself a new PC. I upgraded from the following system:

Asus A7N8X

AMD 3200+ XP

1GB Geil DDR 3200 Ram

EVGA 6600GT AGP

My new system is as follows:

Asus P5B - Deluxe

Intel C2D E6400 (over clocked from 2.13GHz to 3.2GHz)

2 GB DDR2 800 Ram

EVGA 7900GT

Seagate Sata3 7200.10 HDD

My system runs the game very well. The over clocked help a good deal with all my plugins. The major difference in the systems I have noticed is the fact that you are running an ATI card, while I have a nVidia card. I used to own ATI card during the 9x00 series, but their poor driver performance turned me to nVidia. I have not had one problem with my nVidia cards. When I owned the 9800pro, every game was crashing to my desktop (SC4D, BF1942DC, BF2, and others). Once I switched it out for the nVidia 6600GT, the problems went away.

Because SC4 is an older game you might need to roll your drivers back to an older version. It will take some time to figure out which one is the best. But thats what I would say the cause of the problem is.

[DFire870 2]

I'm using hardware rendering. Here are my specs:

Intel Centrino Duo 1.66 GHz

ATI Mobility Radeon X1300

1 GB RAM

Windows XP MCE

But as I've said before, it's running great, especially considering I'm using a laptop.

[AND_YOU_ARE 0]

How many people use sound cards, and if so, have the drivers been updated? I have onboard sound, but opt to use my SB Audigy 2PTM sound card. I do have the latest driver for that. Its just another idea, and something to check on.

[thenext88 102]

I have the exact same specs as you (except I have a e6600)

The only thing that worked was software mode. I have a city of 150k people right now and it runs fine. Thank God the C2D is a very powerful processor or we would be screwed with our x1900xt.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

A memory and CPU intensive game, this needs the fastest CPU you can get and as much RAM as you can afford.  Full virtual memory is also good.  On XP that's 4GB.  Graphics cards are not much of an issue.  I am running with a GEForce 4 integrated graphics system with the chip on the mother board and shared 128MB memory.

I would turn all the fancy options on your cards off, especially as there seem to be issues with ATI cards.  If you really have a fast CPU, I would run with Software Rendering.

[AND_YOU_ARE 0]

Just for the fun of it I was playing around with my settings. I have a 275K city and switched between software and hardware rendering. I noticed that with hardware everything looks much sharper, and much brighter colors than on software. The smoothness of the game does not vary much.

NVidia has not released new drivers since the beginning of November for the 7x00 cards. I am not sure about ATI. But if you do not have the latest ATI drivers and you have problems, try them. But from my past experience of ATI, you usually have to preform extensive trial and error to find the best version of drivers. What makes it more tedious in this case, is the fact that SC4 is an older game by todays drivers.

[jay_allen1978 0]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body A memory and CPU intensive game, this needs the fastest CPU you can get and as much RAM as you can afford.  Full virtual memory is also good.  On XP that's 4GB.  Graphics cards are not much of an issue.  I am running with a GEForce 4 integrated graphics system with the chip on the mother board and shared 128MB memory.

I would turn all the fancy options on your cards off, especially as there seem to be issues with ATI cards.  If you really have a fast CPU, I would run with Software Rendering.quote>

 

i agree,  i also have an older vid card, but at the same token i am running over 2 gig ram 120 gig hd, and 4 gig VM. it still lags, but i can add more custom content, and still play it with minimum problems.

[ChatInBed 2]

I play the SimCity DeLuxe version

These are my specs :

Processor

Type: Intel Pentium D 820 / 2.8 GHz : Dual-Core

Chipsettype: ATI Radeon Xpress 200 / 800 MHz

1 Gigabyte DDR II SDRAM

Graphics ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series, 64 MB

Swap file is set to 1440 Mb ( standard, i never changed it )

Game settings:

Resolution: 1024 x 768

Hardware rendering

Color quality 16 bits

Visual effects, # of cars/sims and shadows are set to medium

Building draw speed, texture quality and city detaila are set to high

All 5 checkboxes ( clouds/Fog, waves etc. ) are "checked"..

The game is running fine, no problems whatsoever

I do think however you should always install the latest patches

And you can set it to the highest resolution with 32 bit colors,

but that will surely slow your computer down,

but will you see the difference in quality ??

I have regions with large cities, packed with buildings and the game is still pretty fast

[Peteri 0]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate the detailed replies and you people taking the time to help me out.

I'm currently running ATI Catalyst 7.2, the latest version of the drivers. I'm not very sure why rolling back drivers would be a good idea because I thought the new versions would have what's in the old versions? Correct me if I'm wrong.

The precise term to use would be that my graphics are stuttering. My C2D is the lowest end clocking in at 1.83GHz only but I mean it's a C2D, it should definitely be able to take it. The odd thing is I'm trying it on my laptop and it works pretty fine at medium and 1024x768, no lag or stutter.

Intel Centrino 1.6GHz 

512MB DDR333 RAM

ATI 7500 Mobility 32MB RAM

768MB Paging file. 

Just a few BATs and Lots installed nothing too big yet..

I've got Patch 2, and latest drivers for everything.

I'll go try figuring out the graphics settings and searching around the drivers. In any case I've got a better idea on how to fix this. Thanks people!

[AND_YOU_ARE 0]

For ATI, their latest drivers aren't always their best drivers. Cat7.2 is the latest, but from what I hear Cat6.8 seems to be the most stable. This was the same thing I experienced when I owned different 9x00 series cards. That was the whole reason I switched to nVidida video cards, much better drivers. Im sure I dont need to tell you this, but reducing the number of programs and processes in the background helps. There must be something different between your laptop and your desktop, do you have Cat7.2 on your laptop?

[Peteri 0]

Well my laptop is running a mobility card so the drivers are different. I'm pretty sure it's not running Cat7.2 but I'm not sure what it's running. Well I've tried everything, including disabling every modern graphics card features, fiddling with vertical sync and all. I found out that everything medium settings, 16-bit colour mode at software rendering, I can possibly play the game the odd thing is that I have to scroll through the entire city once to let all the graphics load up or something. Then the lag is mostly gone but I still get stutters now and then. I think I'll just stick to playing this on my laptop in a well cooled environment. Thanks people.

[PAddLePoP 0]

I have the same problem on my Mac Pro (Running Windows XP)

My Specs:

4 X 2.66 Ghz Xeon C2D

2GB RAM

X1900XT

I am running catalyst 7.2 and I suspect it is a problem with that but don't want to downgrade the drivers in case it stuffs up my other games. I have tried the omega drivers and its the same thing unfortunately

[Peteri 0]

Quick update, I recently reinstalled the game on my desktop and set video rendering to 16bpp and software mode. The game runs perfectly fine with everything on and only shadows and # of cars/sim on low. I went to the .cfg files in the game directory itself and just fiddled with the values here and there, making sure that SoftwareRendering = true. Game rocks now! No lag with a 500MB plugin folder.

[XL 19]

I think SC4 and the ATI cards don't necessarily jibe with one another, hence some of the performance issues.

My current rig is (yet another laptop. Yay!)

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz

2GB DDR2 266MHz

nVidia GeForce Go 7600 (overclocked with custom drivers)

Windows XP Pro

4GB Paging File

SC4 Rush Hour runs like a raped ape (no offense to apes, violated or otherwise) in small and medium cities. It slows down a tad bit in software mode, but since I usually keep it running in hardware mode, it's no problem. Using SC4DatPacker speed up the loading times tremendously, especially since I'm packing over 1.5Gb of plugins.

The Core 2 Duo really kicks my old 2.53GHz Pentium 4 in the nads. Unfortunately, I haven't tried any other system out with a higher clock speed as of yet. Hopefully, a miracle will happen so I can finally order in that Asus G1 I've been looking forward to.

[shpangler 19]

I just got an HP dv6000 laptop with the following specs:

2Gb RAM, 140Gb Hard Drive, 1.66 Ghz and an ok graphics card (can't remember it.)

When I first installed Sim City and Rush Hour there were some major graphic problems, so I switched it from 'hardware' to 'software' in te options menu and now it runs perfectly.  Thanks for the info and I highly recommend trying this if anyone else has video troubles...

[schm0 27]

Originally posted by: Peteri Quick update, I recently reinstalled the game on my desktop and set video rendering to 16bpp and software mode. The game runs perfectly fine with everything on and only shadows and # of cars/sim on low. I went to the .cfg files in the game directory itself and just fiddled with the values here and there, making sure that SoftwareRendering = true. Game rocks now! No lag with a 500MB plugin folder.quote>

Which files did you edit?

[j3shafer 0]

I just got a new Toshiba Satellite laptop with a Intel Centrino Duo, Windows Vista, etc. and have noticed that after playing the game for a while, the screen blacks out for a second and when it comes back the graphics are incomplete/pixelated/completely bogus! Sometimes I can just pan away and when I come back, its refreshed just fine but sometimes I have to completely quit both the city and the game itself and start it back up again.

[TomKat 0]

Make sure you alt+tab out to desktop and set the processor affinity to either 1 or 0 in task manager as well. My wife had similar issues and this resolved it. The game simply doesn't play well with dual core processors.

[TomKat 0]

Also, there is a core2duo update through M$ on Windows update. If anybody needs it, AMD also released a dual core patch that synchs the timing on the processors for apps (games) that have issues/aren't coded for dual-core.

AMD patch can be found here:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html

It is the first download item on the page

[snsr 0]

I'm so glad I found this forum/thread. I've loved these games from the very first verison, but haven't been able to play SC4 Deluxe on my new Thinkpad T60p despite my best efforts. My old Dell notebook (with an nvidia 7800gtx) threw the game around like a rag doll. My Thinkpad (with an ATI mobility v5250/x1700 256mb and a core2duo) crashes moments after selecting a square from the region, requiring a reboot. All updated drivers, etc., despite graphics settings

I set it to software rendering and assigned it to one CPU, and all is well so far! I'm just about to play for a while, see if it overheats or whatever it was doing..

Thanks for your help

[jackel.22 3]

Yeh this game detests my dule core processor and runs better on my old laptop with only 500 mb of ram as opposed to 2gb now.

its a shame but quite funny in a way too,

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: jackel.22 Yeh this game detests my dule core processor and runs better on my old laptop with only 500 mb of ram as opposed to 2gb now.

its a shame but quite funny in a way too,quote>

If you are running XP, try setting the affinity to one processor.  Should be just fine.  Be sure to turn off any advanced stuff on your graphics card too.  Best setting is application selected.

[ImpliedObject 0]

I have had the same problem with my 1900XTX. If you are running straight XP, try stepping down to 5.11 or the 5.12 version of the drivers. Around 6.2 is where it really slows the game down. That is how I fixed it on my old machine. My new one runs XP64 so I am stuck with only the newest drivers. I finally gave up and set up a dual boot with windows2000 and it runs great under 2000. Hope this helps.

[croxis 150]

Allright, my turn.

SimCity 4 Delux, patched, doesn't run on my machine, even with processor affinity set.

Pentium D:

1 gig ram

XP Pro

Nvidia 7600GT 93.71 drivers

[coolotter88 2]

I think SC4 only has a problem with amd dual core processors.

[sunpig 1]

my system run without no problem at all

Dual Core 2.8 ghz

Nvidia 8800gtx OC2 640mb

4 gigs(dual 2gigs) OCZ

asus motherboard P5

xp media center